6 Keys to Becoming a Trusted Leader

Accountability comes from the presence of trust and the absence of fear.

When a manager – or better yet, the leadership team – is both trusted and trusting, others in the organization know where they stand. They have greater confidence in their ability to do the work and in the people they work with. It’s not frightening to take ownership and initiative.

But when you and your fellow managers undermine trust, fear finds a foothold. Being accountable becomes risky. And overall performance suffers.

As a boss and leader, you need to do everything you can to create an atmosphere of accountability. There are also specific steps you can take to earn a personal reputation for being a trusted, accountable leader:

1. Define and clarify roles, goals and expectations. Remove as many unknowns as possible. Be clear about what you know and what you need. Work with your team to define and clarify their roles, communicate them and manage any confusion or conflict. If you are sending confusing or mixed messages, you fuel uncertainty, doubt and fear.

2. Don’t accept denial, blaming, excuses and scapegoating. When things don’t go right, beware the “victim mindset.” First, set a good example and avoid denial, blam­ing, excuses and scapegoating. Second, help others to see that these are not useful responses to mistakes or missteps. Third, listen carefully. Work to understand the system’s role before over-reacting to one person’s behavior.

3. Don’t let department heads and team or project leaders off the hook.When results fall short, team managers often claim that their hands were tied. An inherited staff, a lack of staff, remote team members, and matrix management resulting in conflicting priorities are common woes. But you need to ask, were these limiting elements really a surprise? For team leaders to be accountable, they have to understand their context, think ahead and inform senior management of potential shortcomings in advance. Waiting until trouble hits or targets are missed is a career-limiting behavior in accountable organizations.

4. Take initiative to figure out where the barriers to success lie. This is the flip side of the previous point. You need to seek out and understand the barriers and potential problems in your own group and work to minimize their impact. Bring in your senior management or peers or work groups to share ideas, pre-empt problems or solve issues sooner than later. An accountable leader is willing to admit if he or she is struggling to find the best answer and wants additional knowledge, advice or wisdom. Be open to your own learning opportunities.

5. Set milestones and metrics. To be accountable people need to know if they are on track. They want to see the links between what they do and overall team or business performance. To be an accountable leader, you’ll want to communicate important data and targets and work with team members to identify additional deadlines or metrics. Waiting until the end of a quarter or after the fact to be declared a winner or loser will breed frustration and prevent buy-in.

6. Find balance between process and results. Are your people held accountable for the standards and processes they use to make decisions and run the group? Or do you hold them accountable for just for the outcomes? If your leadership style consistently falls in the middle of that continuum, you’re encouraging accountability along both the how and what dimensions of the work – and people will notice.